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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Michael J. Potter is one of the last little big men left in organic food. More than 40 years ago, Mr. Potter bought into a hippie cafe and 'whole earth' grocery here that has since morphed into a major organic foods producer and wholesaler, Eden Foods."

"The debate over who should use the roads and paths of the country's national parks is consistently fraught. In California's Sequoia National Park, unkind words are sometimes exchanged when pack animals with their wide panniers encounter hikers kitted out with the latest R.E.I. gear on the trails behind Mount Whitney. The code of etiquette and safety governing such encounters is sometimes ignored, And there have been continual efforts to ban horses, burros and llamas because of their impact on the trails."

"WASHINGTON -- When it comes to energy issues, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Josh Mandel agree on two things -- and maybe only two things: First, energy issues and economic issues are inextricably linked. And second, they will probably play an outsized role in Ohio's U.S. Senate race."

"A disturbing nationwide decline in oysters and the life-giving reefs that they build is particularly dramatic in California, where the once-abundant native species has been virtually wiped out, according to a recent scientific study."

"KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An unrelenting and record-setting heat wave peaked this weekend, beating a broad swath of states into sweaty submission, with above-normal triple-digit temperatures stretching from St. Louis to Washington."

"PRESTONSBURG, Ky. — Ray Marcum bears the marks of a bygone era of coal mining. At 83, his voice is raspy, his eastern Kentucky accent thick and his forearms leathery. A black pouch of Stoker's 24C chewing tobacco pokes out of the back pocket of his jeans. "I started chewing in the mines to keep the coal dust out of my mouth," he says.

Plenty of that dust still found its way to his lungs. For the past 30 years, he's gotten a monthly check to compensate him for the disease that steals his breath — the old bane of miners known as black lung.

"For two centuries, the town of Hermann has been known for the Missouri River. But now the river is making Hermann known for an unexpected reason: It is a hot spot for nitrate. Despite three decades of costly efforts to clean it up, the levels at Hermann have increased 75 percent since 1980."

"According to Professor Ian Simmonds of the University of Melbourne, it is a combination of the melting sea ice and the atmospheric warming that is happening globally that is responsible for the high rate of warming in the Arctic."

"Long respected by his professional peers around the world, [scientist Michael] Mann became more widely known as one of the targets of the so-called and now discredited 'climategate scandal,' involving hacked emails of several prominent climate scientists. Mann's science and professional conduct (and that of others so targeted) have been repeatedly exonerated by independent professional review."

"More than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States, and June saw more than 3,200 records topped, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday."

"The June 29 derecho, which caused widespread damage in Washington, D.C. blossomed to full fury in a record hot environment. Could the heat added to the atmosphere from manmade greenhouse gases have provided extra fuel to this explosive storm?

The amount of energy available to this storm was extreme and, wundergound weather historian Chris Burt called the number of all-time heat records set around the time 'especially extraordinary.'

But as I wrote the day after the storm, connecting global warming to the derecho is a complicated and controversial question."

"Lakes across eastern Japan are being contaminated with radioactive cesium from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, and scientists are warning of a growing problem in Tokyo Bay.

Radioactive mud carried down rivers is slowly accumulating in the lakes, in some cases making fish and shellfish dangerous to eat.

In March, a maximum cesium concentration of 9,550 becquerels per kilogram was detected in mud on the bottom of the Bizengawa river, 1.65 kilometers from where it flows into Japan’s second-largest lake, Lake Kasumigaura in Ibaraki Prefecture.

"AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has published a list of 49 chemicals whose everyday use it deems dangerous to the health of Maine children, but an environmental policy group is urging stronger action."